On the morning of August 17, the City of Clovis quietly turned on an online form. Type your name, type your bid, type what you'd like to call one of two fennec fox brothers born this past May, and hit submit. The bidding closes at 5 p.m. on August 31, the winner gets a call, and the name goes up on the zoo's Facebook page once it's finalized. Every dollar raised goes straight to Hillcrest Park Zoo.
If you just moved to Clovis, this might read as a charming oddity, the kind of small-town headline that makes a place feel folksy. If you've lived here longer, and especially if you've ever walked past a donor plaque on your way to the giraffe barn, you already know this isn't new behavior. It's the zoo's actual funding model, just running in public for two weeks.
What's Actually Up for Bid
The two brothers arrived from a facility in Ohio and were born on May 18, 2026. They're on exhibit now, right next to the spider monkey enclosure, and the zoo is inviting anyone, resident or business, to see them before deciding what a winning bid is worth.
It's worth separating these two from a pair of animals the zoo already has. Hillcrest has offered up-close encounters with resident bat-eared foxes for a while now, a different species entirely, native to eastern and southern Africa rather than the fennec fox's home range across the Sahara. If you've booked a fox encounter here before, you've met the bat-eared pair, not the brothers currently up for naming rights. The distinction matters if you're heading over expecting to see the animals from the auction and end up at the wrong enclosure.
Zoo director Stephanie Chavez framed the new arrivals simply in the city's release:
"We are so excited to welcome these brothers to Hillcrest Park Zoo and can't wait to see what the public has in mind for names."
How the Bidding Actually Works
The mechanics are straightforward, but a few details matter if you're planning to submit a bid before the window closes:
- The form lives at clovisnm.gov/fennecfox and opened Monday, August 17 at 9 a.m.
- Bidding closes Monday, August 31 at 5 p.m., no extensions mentioned in the city's release.
- Both individuals and businesses can bid, and a full list of auction rules is posted alongside the form.
- The highest bidder is contacted directly after the deadline.
- Names are confirmed and posted publicly on the zoo's Facebook page, not before.
- All proceeds go to the zoo itself, not a general city fund.
That last point is the one worth sitting with, because it's not a one-off arrangement invented for two fox cubs.
This Has Been the Model for Years
The city's own zoo page carries a standing line for its donation program: "Your Name Here!" It's an open invitation, evergreen, sitting there whether or not there's a fox to name. Pair that with the zoo's Adopt-a-Zoo-Animal program, which lets residents donate toward exhibit upkeep and enrichment items in exchange for recognition, and a pattern comes into focus. Hillcrest Park Zoo has been asking the community to literally buy a piece of the place for years. The fennec fox auction isn't a new idea dressed up for a news cycle. It's the same idea, just given a deadline and a dollar figure that makes for a better headline than a donation form usually does.
That distinction matters if you're trying to understand how a city-run zoo this size stays open. It isn't propped up by admission alone.
A Town of 38,000 That Turns Out 40,000 Times a Year
Here's the number that puts the whole thing in perspective. Clovis is a town of roughly 38,000 people. Hillcrest Park Zoo pulls in about 40,000 visits a year, according to a New Mexico tourism department interview with Chavez. That means annual attendance at a municipal zoo in eastern New Mexico slightly outnumbers the population of the town it sits in. Not every visit is a resident, plenty come from Cannon Air Force Base families and travelers passing through on U.S. 60/84, but the ratio still tells you this isn't a once-a-summer tourist stop. It's a place locals actually return to.
Part of that comes down to what it costs to walk in. As of this year, general admission runs $6 for adults and $3 for children ages 3 to 11, with kids under 2 free. Clovis residents and military members get half-price entry on the second Saturday of every month, seniors get the same discount on the fourth Saturday, and a single annual membership runs $30, with a family membership at $60. Parking is free. Groups from schools, churches, and scout troops can reserve a $2-per-person rate. None of this reads like an attraction pricing itself for tourists.
For context on scale: the zoo opened originally in 1927 and has occupied its current site on Norris Street since the 1950s. It's the second-largest zoo in New Mexico, home to more than 150 animals across 63 species, spread across roughly 27 acres of shaded, winding paths inside the larger 150-some acre footprint of Hillcrest Park itself. That's a lot of zoo for a town this size to be running on ticket prices this low, which circles back to why the naming auction, the adoption program, and the donor plaques aren't incidental. They're structural.
The Rest of the Cast, and the Rest of the Year
The fennec fox brothers are the newest residents, but they're joining a lineup that already has its own local celebrities. There's Joe, a talking raven whose vocabulary reportedly includes "hangman's coming" and "hey Joe," according to visitor reviews, enough of a personality that he gets singled out by name in trip write-ups. There's Sooner, the zoo's Bengal tiger, along with a pair of Bactrian camels named Alexander and Eliza Camelton, and two coatis, Fuchsia and Scarlet, the more recent of the two personally picked up by Chavez on a transport run.
The calendar around the animals matters too. October brings Haunting at Hillcrest, with a costume contest, food trucks, live music, and a pumpkin carving competition where the finished jack-o-lanterns get handed over to the bison as a snack. December turns the grounds into a lights display for about a week, complete with inflatables, a large Christmas tree, and a standing invitation for Santa. The zoo has also flagged expansion plans that include a new flamingo exhibit, an addition to the giraffe barn, and a bigger habitat for Sooner.
None of that happens in isolation from the park around it. Hillcrest Park itself carries a par-3 golf course, pickleball courts, a seasonal splash park, a sunken garden that hosts weddings, picnic areas, and a dog park, all sharing the same grounds as the zoo. It's the kind of place where a Saturday can start with a stroller loop past the bison and end with a pickleball match, without ever leaving the property. If you're weighing what there actually is to do around town on a normal weekend, that stretch of Norris Street covers more ground than most single attractions in a city this size, something we've touched on before when mapping out Clovis's open spaces and weekend routines.
If You Want In on This Round
The bidding window closes at 5 p.m. on August 31, so there isn't much runway left if you want to put in a name. The zoo is open Tuesday through Sunday, gates from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., grounds cleared by 5, with extended hours in the summer months. It's closed Mondays and on city-observed holidays. The address is 1208 N. Norris Street, and the fennec fox brothers are easy to find, right next to the spider monkeys, no ticket required beyond regular admission.
Whether or not you end up submitting a bid, it's worth walking over before the end of the month just to see what a name is actually worth in a town where the zoo runs partly on the public deciding to buy in.
If you're the kind of person who pays attention to details like this, the small civic mechanics that make a place feel lived-in rather than just passed through, that's exactly the read on Clovis we try to bring to every conversation with buyers and sellers here. If a move to this side of Curry County is somewhere on your horizon, the team at Sagebrush Real Estate is happy to talk through what life here actually looks like, foxes and all. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
